Coach's Eye

Play like the pros

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iOS App of the Week My never-ending quest for a decent forehand recently turned up this handy little sporting app for the iPhone.

As the name implies, Coach’s Eye is primarily aimed at sports trainers who want to analyse their athlete’s performance. It allows the coach to record clips of the athlete and to play them back using its slow-mo option to examine their technique in detail.

Record athletes in action

You can also import existing video clips from sources such as iPhoto on a Mac, Dropbox or email attachments, and I’ve used it to examine quite a few clips of Roger Federer’s forehand in the forlorn hope of improving my own technique.

The clever part of the app is that it includes some simple annotation tools that allow you to draw onto the moving video image in order to highlight particular actions. You can do this in real-time as you play the video or record a new copy of the video that stores the annotations for later review.

Annotate the play in slow-mo

The slow-mo option works well – and would probably be fun for non-sporty videos as well, such as children’s parties or adults falling over drunk and suchlike. The scrubbing control works smoothly too, making it easy to pinpoint the precise actions that you want to focus on.

There’s also an option to record your own explanatory voiceovers, and once you’ve finished working on a clip you can store it in the iPhone’s own camera roll, upload it to YouTube or to the developer’s own servers, and then email or text a link to your friends.

Add audio annotations too

Professional ‘telestrators’ that allow you annotate video footage can cost hundreds of pounds so Coach’s Eye is a bargain. You don’t have to be a professional coach to appreciate it either, as amateurs such as myself will enjoy using it to shoot videos of friends and teammates, or to analyse clips of their sporting heroes. ®

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